"Well—"
"You are curious, Andrews, aren't you?"
"Oh, if there's any secret about it—why, I—"
Mayhan laughed irritatingly; so irritatingly that his questioner was tempted to silence him with his fist.
"No secret at all," the surgeon said, starting off. "It happened—purely by accident."
Then young Andrews, nettled and thoroughly uncomfortable, hastened back to Nina with his scant news. The name "Scripps" meant nothing to her.
But Mayhan, meanwhile, dropping into the club, exploded a bombshell. He found Colonel Darling alone and brooding in his chosen corner, a tall glass of Scotch and soda at his right hand.
"I say, colonel," he blurted, "just came from a chap who says he knows you—or did. Name of Nibbetts."
Darling started so violently that his arm struck the table, jarred it, and sent over the whisky glass, splashing.
For a moment his face flamed and the veins in his neck swelled to the danger point. He gripped the chair-arms, and his throat emitted an inarticulate gurgle.
The next minute he relaxed suddenly, pale as paper.
Colonel Darling's courage had never been questioned. But physical courage is one thing and moral courage is another—very much another; and it was physical courage in which Darling was strong.
It was beyond question that he could face overwhelming odds in the field without "batting an eye-lash," as the saying goes. He had proved that time and time again. Yet from unhappy wedlock he had fled like a craven wolf and sought surcease in the bottle.
This should have spoken his type of weakness for all to hear. But his fellow officers were deaf to the truth, forbearing to view the situation from the only right and real standpoint, though the condition was undeniably plain.
For the tidings brought by Mayhan the colonel was not in the least prepared. Again moral courage was demanded, and again he exhibited the white feather. To Mayhan's faith in his commanding officer the exhibition was an astonishing setback. Darling had been bowled over by a mere name.
Others, too, had heard and witnessed with much the same amazement. It was very clear to them all that Colonel Darling had been thrown into a white funk by the mere mention of the odd word "Nibbetts."
They could get it from no other angle, and they could reconcile it with nothing they knew of their man. In view of subsequent events, their attitude at this moment is important.
Darling was quite five minutes in pulling himself together. Then he caught the doubt in Mayhan's eyes, and his first impulse was to explain—or try to. But on second thought, realizing that there was nothing for him to say, he ordered whisky and soda and held his peace. And no man asked a question.
The clock pointed to five to eleven. At ten past Colonel Darling left the club and walked to the hotel, which was less than a quarter of a mile away. But there his cowardice caught him again, and he paused at the gate of the compound.
The broad, shaded roadway was deserted, so that what followed went unobserved. Back and forth, torn by indecision, he irritably and fearsomely paced. For the uplift of his flagging, flaccid will he seemed likely to require either the Archimedean lever or the Archimedean screw.
Fifteen awful minutes dragged torturously by before, in sheer desperation, he entered the hotel and faced the clerk in charge, his card in his hand.
"Send that to the Visc—" he began, only to pull himself up with a sharp jolt.
The clerk in charge, not overburdened with wits, failed to catch the significance of the abbreviation. He only stared and waited.
"Send that to Mr. Mayhan's patient," corrected the colonel, the sweat beading on brow and chin, and turned to pace the floor as he had paced the roadway.
The wait, though seemingly interminable, ended too quickly for his wish, and his rap on the door of Mr. Scripps's room was hesitant and feeble.
There came in answer an inarticulate rumble, and an instant later across ten yards of floor space he gazed on the confronting Nibbetts, and paused, speechless. But the confronting Nibbetts—the nickname by which the Viscount Kneedrock had been best known to relatives and close friends—was eminently more composed.
"I am indeed deeply honored," he said and bowed stiffly. The irony of his tone was withering.
Darling, fighting himself for words, advanced a step or two. Then: "I should never have known you," he ventured unfortunately.
The other laughed with a hoarse, grim bitterness.
"No?" he queried. "How odd!" And his caller colored to his eyebrows.
"Would you care to sit down?" the viscount continued, pushing a chair forward with his uninjured right hand. The left, bandaged, was supported by a sling. "It may help you to some self-possession."
But Colonel Darling, irritated, shook his head.
"I sha'n't detain you," he said. "But—I—you see—you see, I had to make sure. I should never have believed, otherwise."
"You're quite sure you believe now?"
"Quite. Still, I can't understand. I would have sworn—"
"You did swear," Kneedrock interrupted. "That was the devil of it."
The colonel's lip twitched under his mustache.
"I never had a doubt," he averred. "I—I am unspeakably sorry."
"Much good that does. Still, it's no end decent that you should say so. Yet, on the whole, I fancy you got rather the worst of it. Will you sit down to oblige me? I've something I'd like to say to you."
Jack Darling, wretched as never before in his wretched life, slid limply into the chair that waited.
"Can't I offer you something?" asked Kneedrock, his hand on the bell.
In spite of his pride and because of his misery the colonel accepted.
Certainly the viscount's was the more commanding presence. He seemed to have taken the situation in hand at once. Darling was still the reverse of composed. His eyelids twitched and his lips quivered.
The two men were nearly of an age. If there was any advantage here it, too, was on the side of Kneedrock, who had just turned forty-four. But in general appearance the colonel contrasted strongly for the better.
He was especially well groomed, whereas Nibbetts was at once leonine, rugged, and nearly shabby. His tawny hair and beard were ragged and uncared for. He gave the impression of having been out of the world in which such things mattered. And this was true.
Having dispensed his hospitality, he reverted to his sneer. He was still standing when he said:
"I assume Mrs. Darling never showed you my letter of six years ago."
His voice aroused the officer, who was in a reverie.
"Your—your letter?" he queried uncertainly.
"My letter from Zanzibar, in which I said I was starting for the world's end."
"Yes, I saw that."
"And still you refused to believe? How often our wishes guide our reason."
Something of resentment, of indignation, struck a light in Darling's pale eyes, but his voice held to a monotone.
"I couldn't. I—" He hesitated, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped his perspiring brow. "You see, I—I didn't know your hand, and—well, the signature might have been any one's. It was, if I remember, your Christian name only."
"You mean you suspected that Nina was playing you a trick?"
"I—I didn't say so."
"Others saw it, I suppose? Others that knew me? Those that did know my hand?"
"Yes, I fancy they did. I heard the question discussed."
"What question?"
"The question of the miracle. The question of the dead alive."
Kneedrock's lip curled and his huge shoulders stretched their sinews.
"Huh!" he grunted. "After all, it didn't matter. You'd already married her. You'd already begun to reap tares."
Now the pale eyes of Darling flashed ominously. "You've no right to say that," he said shortly with irritation.
"I'm not alone in saying it," returned the honorable viscount calmly. "I've heard it in the islands of the south seas. You didn't fancy it was a secret, I hope?"
Colonel Darling was silent.
"She's led you a pretty dance, I dare say."
Still Colonel Darling was silent.
"I understood, too, that the worm had turned? Pray pardon the simile."
Colonel Darling being still silent, Kneedrock smiled.
"I was fool enough to come all the way back here with the idea of punishing you," he pursued. "But I've changed my mind about that. You're getting punishment enough, that's plain. So I am going to thank you instead. I know now what was spared me. Darling, you have my sympathy; you have really."
Darling got suddenly to his feet. "Damn your sympathy!" he cried. "I don't know what you've heard. But I do know it isn't true."
And at that the viscount laughed. "I haven't heard anything," he retorted. "I've seen. And I'm like you—I believe what my eyes tell me. Your eyes told you I was butchered to death at Spion Kop, and you couldn't be convinced I wasn't until you saw me here to-night resurrected. You wouldn't take my written word, and I can't take your spoken word. The evidence to the contrary is too strong."
The colonel was again silent. He lifted his glass and drained it.
"I'm glad you called," Kneedrock continued. "Not that I needed any further conviction, but—"
"Further conviction?" Darling broke in. "I thought—"
"That you were yourself the only conviction. Oh, no. I knew before you came. I saw before you came. I had already made up my mind to go back without seeing you."
Darling gazed at him in mingled amazement and perplexity.
"I—I don't understand," he faltered. "You—you've seen Nina, perhaps?"
"I've seen Nina."
"And it was she who told you?"
"She hasn't spoken to me. I am going away without so much as a word from her or to her."
The colonel's perplexity waxed greater. "Will you kindly tell me what under Heaven you're driving at? It's all a riddle to me—a damned—"
"I'll not tell you another word," the other answered. "You must know all I do—and more, I dare say. Why should I add anything to the bare fact that I know where the fault lies, and that it is not in you?"
"Because you've said too much to leave it where it is," Darling insisted. "You must say it. You must say what you saw, and where and when you saw it."
But then Kneedrock laughed again in his grim, bitter fashion.
"You're not my superior officer here, remember," he came back. "I obey no commands but my own; and I refuse to submit to dictation."
The red flag of anger overspread Darling's visage.
"I infer that you have been spying," he charged.
"You may infer what you please—even that if it gives you any satisfaction. I shall not presume to dictate to you, either."
At that instant the bandaged hand protruded by chance a bit beyond its sling, and Darling's gaze rested upon it.
"I begin to see," he said more calmly.
The other noted the look and caught the inference. "Oh, this!" he exclaimed, holding it up. "Rather nasty."
"How did you get it?" asked the colonel boldly.
"Man-eater," was the answer. "Vicious beast!"
"You've been in the jungle, then?"
Kneedrock calmly began refilling his pipe. "Didn't Mayhan tell you?" he queried.
"Not a word."
"Ah! Yes, I've been in the jungle, and I stumbled on a she-tiger's lair." It was not intentional, but the manner of the speech gave it a significance aside from the phrasing.
Darling was standing by a table, and as he dropped his eyes musingly they rested on a small object that lay beside the tray of decanters and glasses. In an instant he was holding it up.
"May I have this?" he asked. It was a .45-caliber bullet, and the blood on it was still damp.
"No," refused Kneedrock flatly.
"I fancied not," rejoined the colonel. "You're keeping it as a souvenir, I suppose."
"I'm keeping it as evidence," the viscount said, lighting his pipe.
Later that night Jack Darling did an utterly unheard of thing. He knocked loudly on the door of his wife's bed-chamber and demanded admittance.
Nina, who had not yet fallen asleep, sat up in alarm, gathered herself together with an effort, and then, strangely enough, admitted her husband without protest. And if there can be a comparison in unheard of things, this was still more utterly unheard of.
She had turned up the reading-lamp, which, being shaded and its glow directed toward a limited area, did little more than make the general darkness of the room visible. Then she sat down on the bed's edge within the glow's circumference and waited.
Jack Darling didn't sit down. He stood in the shadow biting the ends of his mustache, his hands behind him, and his gaze, which was fixed on Nina, narrowed. She felt in her heart that something momentous was about to transpire; and it would be idle to say she was without suspicion of the underlying cause. For the report brought her by young Andrews had fallen far short of either satisfying or giving adequate relief to her anxieties.
Still she was not prepared for her husband's first and deliberately spoken sentence, which was:
"I have just come from Harry Kneedrock."
Nina wanted to scream then, but she couldn't. Her breath came too short. And she needed every bit of breath she could draw, because her heart had grown suddenly big in her breast and was pounding fearfully.
She felt, too, that if she opened her mouth it must pop out. It was only by breathing rapidly and keeping her lips tight-closed that she kept it in.
"He arrived in Umballa this evening early," Jack Darling pursued. "He saw you and got an ugly shot in the hand from—this."
He held something up which caught and reflected all the diffused light that had stolen outside the illuminated circle; and she saw it was the Andrews automatic. Still she couldn't have spoken had death threatened her for her silence.
"I found it in the drawing-room. Its magazine lacks a single cartridge. I've talked to Jowar, and everything fits. But there's something that Kneedrock won't say and that Jowar doesn't know. So I've come to you for it, and you'll tell me. You must."
He waited a moment for her to say something, but she was still mute. Her eyes were all pupils. They appeared like two black holes in a face devoid of any tint of color, for her lips were blanched and her lifted brows were hidden behind her drooping hair.
"I must know what it was that Kneedrock saw," he pressed.
Her hands were gripping the mattress on either side of her—gripping it until her finger-nails doubled and then broke.
"And I must know why he was shot at," he added.
And then Nina, who had been doubling all the while, broke, too. Before Darling could reach her she pitched forward, a hunched heap on the floor.
It was the next morning, and Nina'sayahsat on a chair in the passage, guarding the door of her mistress's room. To all comers she gave the same answer—hermem-sahibwas sleeping after a night of wakefulness and must not be disturbed.
She gave it to Colonel Darling no less than three times—once before breakfast, once after, and again before he rode away for parade, his eyes bloodshot and his hands all a-tremble.
And all the while the room behind the door was as empty of life as a hatched egg-shell. For in the darkest hour of a gray dawn, closely veiled, Nina had stolen away with herayahescorting, and had taken refuge with the Ramsays, who had a small bungalow within the hotel compound—the same hotel, be it added, which sheltered "Mr. Henry Scripps, Bombay."
Of course she told the Ramsays her story—or, which is closer to fact,astory. Some of it was truth, but it was neither all the truth nor nothing but the truth. She believed dissemblance necessary, and so she had no hesitation in dissembling.
Her main purpose was to escape for a while from Darling and his unanswerable questions, and in the meantime to obtain at all hazards an interview with Kneedrock. She hadn't the faintest idea what the viscount purposed doing, but whatever it was she must stop him.
She knew from what young Andrews had told her that he was masquerading under the name of Scripps. So as Scripps she spoke of him in relating her tale of embarrassment to her American friend, Sibylla Ramsay, while Sibylla's daughter, who should have been fast asleep, sat by and listened with apparently adult understanding.
She implied without actually saying so that she had once had a more or less violent flirtation with Mr. Scripps; that her husband knew of it, and that she feared the consequences of his present presence in Umballa. Therefore it was imperative that she see him and urge his departure at the very earliest possible moment.
She couldn't receive him in her own home, but she'd like to receive him in theirs; and she did hope they would not regard it as an imposition on their friendship and good nature.
"Well, I should say not," returned Sibylla. "I think it's just the loveliest thing. I'm mad over romance, Nina, you know. And this issoromantic."
"Do you mind if I peep at him, dear Mrs. Darling?" asked Jane, nervously gathering her kimono more closely about her slim limbs. "I know he's handsome from his name. It isn't beautiful. Men with beautiful names are always so disappointing."
"You may peep all you care to, my dear," said Nina, "but you mustn't listen. Otherwise I'd suggest that you hide behind the piano or under the sofa. May I write him a note, Sibylla, and bribe your maid to deliver it?"
"You may serenade him from my front veranda if you care to, dear, and I'll beckon him when he comes to his window. But if you think the note idea more discreet, adopt it by all means."
So Nina wrote the note and then sat in a fever of impatience until the dawn grew brighter and the hands of the watch on her wrist circled to a more reasonable morning hour.
She had recovered some measure of poise, but the experience of the night had left its marks upon her, and the uncertainty as to whether Kneedrock would come or refuse to do so, coupled with the prospect of the meeting, which she both longed for and feared, filled the waiting period with a nervous tension that fretted and rasped.
She had begged him to send her an answer, if only verbal. But the maid returned without so much as a syllable. And so her waiting in uncertainty was prolonged. Meanwhile she drank the black coffee with which Sibylla plied her with the assurance that its sustaining power was superior to her habitual tea.
At ten minutes to nine, by the watch on her wrist, just as the fourth cup had been placed in her somewhat steadied hand, the maid who had carried the note brought proof of its delivery by announcing that Mr. Scripps awaited Mrs. Darling's pleasure in the bungalow drawing-room.
Sibylla and Jane were both wonderfully pleased and excited, and Nina, who had expected this moment, if it ever came, quite to overcome her with emotional agitation, surprised herself with a calmly self-contained placidity which she naturally attributed to the stimulation of the caffein.
Even the shock of Kneedrock's changed appearance—for he was almost unrecognizably changed in the nine years since their parting—failed to disturb her inner tranquillity. Only her voice betrayed her. It quavered just the least bit as she spoke the old name.
"Hal!" No one but she had ever called him that.
For his part he husbanded his words. He had taken a place with his back to the mantel and stood there in unmoving silence with his hands clasped behind him—the one still bandaged, but the sling discarded—and his brow drawn with a half frown.
Nina put out a hand tentatively and drew it back when he continued motionless.
"Perhaps you did not wish to see me," she said, nettled.
"You might have thought of that before sending me your extraordinary message." Those were the first words he spoke.
"It would have made no difference," she returned, pausing by the piano and steadying herself by resting a hand on its top. "I had to see you, whether you wished it or not. If you had not come here I should have gone into the hotel."
"I can't for the life of me see what is to be gained by it," he protested.
"There may be nothing gained unless you will believe me."
It was scarcely possible that he could miss the pathos of the words, even if he missed the pathos in the tone. Yet his only answer was a cynical smile.
"I want you to know that the shot which hurt you was not intended for you."
Then he laughed cruelly. "No?" he questioned with feigned surprise. "Still, you must admit that your lover's habit of firing at random through drawing-room windows isn't a perfectly safe amusement at best. He's liable to pot some one, you know."
Her face was crimson. "He's not my lover," she denied indignantly.
"Pardon me. I judged only from what I saw. It was quite evident he was not your husband. I am curious, seeing that he is not your lover, or one of them, what privileges you reserve for them."
"I have no lover or lovers," she protested.
"Dear me!" he said with mock astonishment. "How dreary your poor life must be! I had fancied quite the contrary."
"It was I who told him to shoot," she confessed. "He shot at a bronze cobra in the corner."
"Then he's a worse shot than I thought."
"Oh, he hit the cobra, nevertheless. The bullet glanced."
"Yes," he agreed. "I know. It glanced at me and caught my hand. I suppose the possibility of such a thing didn't occur to either of you."
"I didn't want him to kiss me," she defended at some sacrifice of truth. "In another second he would have, and I told him there was a cobra in the corner to distract him. Besides I meant to frighten ourkhitmatgar. I thought it was he who was spying. And it happened to be you."
"Yes," he admitted calmly. "I came all the way from Melanesia to spy. But I'm rather a novice at it, and got winged the first time. Too bad, I say."
"Then I'm not sorry. You deserved it."
"At all events," he told her, "I saw enough to send me back. I'm not fitted for civilization. I prefer the real savage to the counterfeit. I infinitely prefer the original tigress with her stripes to the reincarnated creature with her soft hands and her rose-leaf cheeks."
She didn't hear the last. It was quite lost upon her.
"You—you are going back?" she questioned, her breath short.
"To-night," he told her. "I've had enough. I'll get the boat at Calcutta that brought me."
She tried to realize the situation, but she couldn't in the least. It was all most extraordinary—she knew that. Nine years ago she had been tumultuously in love with this hulking cousin of hers.
Then, on sheer impulse, instigated by the devil within her, yet without the faintest thought of disloyalty, she had flirted riotously with the new curate, and Nibbetts had gone away to war in South Africa in a pet, without so much as a word of farewell.
In an incredibly short time had come the tidings of his death, and what with her crushing sense of irreparable loss and her ravening conscience all the world changed its colors from gay to dun.
Now the nine years of intervening space had rolled themselves into a pellet and dropped out of the actual. There was nothing real in time or place but this—he was there across the little room, alive, whole; and she was here, and they were talking as if yesterday had dated their parting. It was most extraordinary.
He was going so soon, too, and she had so much, so very much, to say.
"But you mustn't," she said simply.
In his answering look was amused amazement. "Oh, I mustn't, eh? And why mustn't I?"
"Do I have to tell you?" But her eyes were turned away.
"Yes, if you wish me to understand."
"Have—have you forgotten—everything?" And still she did not face him.
He turned sidewise and laid his left arm along the mantel-shelf to rest his injured hand.
"Most things," he answered, "thank God!" And when she did not speak he added: "You set me so fine an example in expeditious forgetting, remember, I had to profit by it."
"I never forgot," was her denial.
"For one who never forgot, you managed to mess things up a great deal, it seems to me."
"I think I was mad," she admitted, her eyes on the floor.
"I doubt if you were ever anything else," he told her bluntly. "And a man's a fool to trust a mad woman."
"Oh, I'm sane now," Nina told him. "Quite, quite sane. And I was hoping—" She paused, uncertain of her phrasing.
"Yes," he encouraged dubiously.
"That you might help me to put things straight," she finished.
He was not altogether sure of her meaning, but he chose to put upon it the worst possible construction.
"Why not let your friend of last night assist?" he asked coolly. "He seems rather expert with firearms. Mistakes are so easy, you know. He could shoot at the bronze cobra again, for instance, and aim a little high."
And at that she faced him.
"You never used to be so bitter," she said. "You can't think what you're saying."
"I've fed on bitterness. I always think the worst, and I'm usually justified. I can't see any way to undo your tangle except by murder!"
Nina shivered, and Kneedrock saw it; but she said nothing.
"I'm glad you didn't pretend to be shocked," he told her. "Only as a rule you're not very keen on quick deaths. You prefer the cat-and-mouse process. You like to play with your victim before adding the final finishing stroke."
"Who's catty now?" she asked simply.
But he made no answer. He moved over to the sofa where lay his hat and walking-stick and took them up.
"Better wait until I'm out of India," he went on cynically. "I might be brought back to testify, and that would be awkward."
"You're going now?" she asked distressfully.
"Only to the hotel. I can't sail until the twenty-seventh. Would you mind waiting until after the first?"
"But you haven't told me a thing," she deplored, ignoring his cruel implication. "Where have you been all the years? What have you been doing? Why have you hidden yourself? There is so much I want to know."
"There is so much you'll never know," he returned. "Why bother with any of it? The title dies with me. I'm not robbing any one, remember."
"You're robbing me," she said desperately, and took a step toward him. "Oh, Hal, if you only knew!"
He retreated a pace, smiling grimly.
"I'll have to ask you to stop that sort of thing, Nina," he said gravely. "You may as well know at once that I won't listen to it."
She sank down upon the sofa where his hat and stick had been, a red lip held by white teeth to check its quivering.
Kneedrock moved toward the door.
Abruptly, swept by a wave of impetuosity, she sprang up and ran to him.
"Hal! Hal! Take me with you. I won't—I can't let you go from me again!"
Already he had swung the door ajar and stood now in the opening.
"I'm afraid you'll have to," he said, his tone cold and hard as steel. "Still I'm glad you asked me. It has paid me for coming half-way round the world."
The door swung sharply shut with Kneedrock on the outside.
At the same moment the door at the opposite end of the room opened, and Jane Ramsay stood on the threshold.
"I was peeping," she cried. "He's homelier even than his name. And—and I hate him!"
"So do I," cried Nina, bracing herself. But she didn't in the least; and Jane Ramsay knew she didn't.
When Colonel Darling returned from parade theayahwas gone from the passage-way outside his wife's room. He entered to find Nina up and dressed. And he found her quite ready to answer his questions.
She told him truthfully what Kneedrock saw through the window, and she told him with equal truth why Andrews fired the shot.
More than that, she told him that his false identification of Kneedrock at Spion Kop had wrecked three lives, and that it was a dear price to pay for one man's carelessness or stupidity.
And that night there was a tragedy in the Darling bungalow.
It was the very last thing Nina expected—to see Kneedrock again; but she did. He called that night after dinner on his way to the railway station, and the motor-car waited for him at the porch. For a minute she fancied he might have relented and was really, after all, going to take her with him. But, if so, he had planned in the worst possible way, the day for Lochinvar enterprises having long since passed and gone, and Colonel Darling—miracle of miracles—being still at home, not having gone to the club.
She rushed into the drawing-room expectant, or half so, and then at a sight of her caller knew that her expectancy was without grounds. For Kneedrock with his well hand was holding out something to her, which she saw almost immediately was a small jewelry box.
"I came very near forgetting it," he said, "though I brought it with me all the way just to see it safe in your hands. It is a gift from my poor dear mother."
The poor dear marchioness had always been very fond of Nina, but she had died just before the breaking out of the Boer War and at the period of Nina's flirtation with the curate.
Nina Darling opened the jewelry box and took out a curiously fashioned ring. The setting was a cross of diamonds and the band was shaped like a crown of points.
"It is lovely," she said.
"It is symbolic," he contributed. "Still I don't see that it applies very appositely to your state. You don't bear your cross at all gracefully, and you certainly don't deserve a crown."
"I should like to know who does," she retorted.
"Oh, there are some martyrs left. There's your husband, for instance. You might turn the ring over to him."
"Jack is a saint," replied Nina. "I'm busy wondering all the time how he keeps his temper."
"And he does, then?"
"Always. He's so good to me I hate him."
"There's something wrong with you. You're not normal."
"I know it. My emotions are all reversed. I'd give anything to be like other women; but I can't be."
Kneedrock was smiling incredulously. "You fool yourself, I believe," he said, "just as you fool others. You are an odd creature."
He looked at his watch and sat down on one end of the settee. She was already occupying the other.
"Jack's going away in the morning," she told him; "to be gone a month. Why don't you stay?"
"Because I mean never to give you a chance to make a fool of me again. Now you have the truth of it."
"He's off on a shooting trip."
"I wonder he doesn't shoot himself, poor beggar."
"That's the only goodness he could do me that I'd appreciate," she said with a light laugh.
Kneedrock's hulking shoulders gave a clumsy shrug.
"You ought to be flayed," he declared.
She was silent for a brief moment. Then she said: "Hadn't I better tell Jack you are here? Thekhitmatgarwill if I don't; and I've no desire to add to the sins I should be flayed for."
"I suppose it would only be civil. Though I'm not keen on seeing him again," was the answer. "I'd no notion he was at home."
Nina stood. "He's in the gun-room. I sha'n't be a moment." And she was gone.
The seconds ticked into a minute and she was not back. Two, three, five minutes followed without bringing her. Kneedrock's time was slipping away, and he had none too much to spare.
In some impatience he got to his feet and sauntered across the room. Then, seeing the bronze cobra, which was not altogether unfamiliar, he stooped interestedly to examine it; and he found the bullet-mark.
But still Nina remained absent. To miss his train meant to miss his boat. Yet he felt that he could not go without at least a final word. He would, he must, therefore, make an effort to find her.
The door through which she had gone stood open before him. Of the plan of the bungalow he knew nothing; but he left the room and turned in haste down a dim-lit passage.
It may have been a few seconds later or it may have been minutes—Kneedrock swore afterward that it was at that very instant—that Jowar, thekhitmatgar, busy in his pantry cleaning silver, was startled by a muffled detonation that shook the frail dwelling as might an earthquake.
He had been bent over his work; but the report brought him to the upright with a jerk. The soup tureen he was handling turned over and rolled to the floor. For the briefest moment he stood dazed, irresolute.
Then, kicking the tureen aside, he shot out of the pantry, ran through the dining-room, the drawing-room, the passage—all empty—until he came of a sudden to the open door of the gun-room, against the jamb of which, pressed close, with pallid face and wide, wild eyes, was Mrs. Darling.
Above her head rolled a little cloud of gray smoke. In his nostrils was the acrid smell of gunpowder.
In the room Lord Kneedrock was on his knees, and Jowar's first impression, as he gave it at the investigation, was that it was he who had been injured. On the floor beside him lay a double-barrel shot-gun, which thekhitmatgarpicked up. And as he stooped to do this he saw that over which the caller was bending.
Between a table and a chair, one leg gruesomely resting across a stool, stretched grimly stark and still the form of his master, Colonel Darling.
The head was in the table's shadow. But as Jowar drew closer he got sight of that which drove all the blood from beneath the dark pigment of his features. Whatever had happened it had made it impossible that he should ever look upon his master's face again.
There was no face there. It had been quite demolished.
At the same instant Kneedrock, sick at the sight, turned away to meet thekhitmatgar'ssinister gaze. Already it seemed the room was swarming with pressing, curious, excited native servants.
Nina had vanished, led away by herayah. Later he learned that the gun found by Jowar had been examined. Both barrels were empty; but there was only one discharged shell.
The motor-car, waiting at the porch to take him to his train, was speeded for surgeons and medical men, as if, under the circumstances, there could be one faint ray of hope even. The garrison was advised, and the whole cantonment knew as if by magic.
Mr. Scripps, of course, couldn't go to Calcutta or anywhere else. He was as fast in Umballa as if there were chains on his hands and feet.
And it stood to reason, coming thus conspicuously before practically the whole British population, he could not hope to escape recognition.
Dinghal, the deputy commissioner, for instance, knew him at once as Viscount Kneedrock; and with Dinghal's fund of memory-stored fact and gossip, it was natural enough that he should put two and two together.
And when it is said that figures never lie, the sum of two and two is the exception that proves the rule. By adding these you can get about any result you choose.
Of Colonel Darling's tragic taking off there followed a rigid investigation.
The one person who knew the exact facts, or should have known them, was his widow. But Nina didn't and couldn't remember. The shock had wiped her memory as clean as a sponged slate.
For days she lay in a state between stupor and coma. When she came out of it she recalled that she had dreamed, but she couldn't remember the dream. It was awful, terrible, she knew that. But that was all she did know.
They had to tell her that Darling was hurt. She treated the tidings with indifference. Then they told her that he had been shot and that it wasn't certain how it happened. She thought he had gone on a shooting trip with Major Cumnock, and that the accident had happened in the jungle.
In the end they made her understand that he was dead; that his brains had been blown out in the bungalow gun-room, and that she was with him at the time. But she convinced them that she knew no more of it than she did of the fourth dimension, which was nothing at all.
Kneedrock, after frankly admitting his identity, swore to the facts as he knew them.
The native butler, Jowar, however, persistently contradicted him in one particular by averring that the viscount was in the gun-room when the shot was fired, as he himself was the first to enter it afterward, when he had found the Englishman bending over Darling's body and had picked up the gun which was lying at the viscount's right hand.
The word of akhitmatgar, however, had little weight against the sworn testimony of a British nobleman. The court agreed that death was the result of accident.
Those who knew certain matters which were aside from admissible evidence took the verdict with several grains of salt, and pointed out that in the matter of seeking motives for murder the authorities had been criminally remiss.
These knowing ones were about equally divided in opinion. The dissenting feminine element was inclined to believe that Mrs. Darling was the slayer. Whereas the doubting Thomases of the community would not put the responsibility past Kneedrock, who, they argued, had returned from hiding in a far corner of the globe, intent upon getting Jack Darling out of the way.
And for both of these views Dinghal, with his long tongue, innocent of venom still perhaps, but poisonous nevertheless—was largely responsible.
Young Andrews, risking everything, was still delaying his return to his post at Junnar. He simply must see Nina before going. He refused to abandon hope.
Once, after repulsing him, she had more than half-yielded. She had repulsed him a second time, it was true; and he did not overlook the significance of the return of Kneedrock, whom she had called her "match" and her "mate."
The odds were overwhelmingly against him. That he knew. But there might still be a chance. And he would make certain before—No, he questioned whether he could return to Junnar with that last hope gone. It might be that he—He didn't know. He wasn't going to face it until it was before him.
Then, in some roundabout way a whisper got to him that Mrs. Darling was much better. The Ramsays, for example, had been to see her.
He had all along been leaving a card for her every day or so. Now he scribbled a line on the card, asking that she would give him a few—just a very few minutes.
He hardly dared fancy that she would. But she did.
Except for her mourning, he found her very little changed.
"I thought you were at work ages ago," was how she greeted him.
He spoke then of the cards he had left. He had sent her some flowers, too.
"I've had no interest in anything," she told him. "There are hundreds of cards here. Some day I may look at them, and still I may not. Every officer in Umballa has sent me flowers, and some of the enlisted men as well. But I do thank you."
"You've never once thought of me, I believe," he reproached.
"That's true," she replied, "I haven't. I've had so much to think of, and it hurts me to think. So I've let Lord Kneedrock do most of the thinking for me."
"It hurts to be forgotten so quickly," he said, his big brown eyes suddenly misty.
"I've been trying to forget so much," Nina confessed.
"And me—did you have to try very hard to forget me?"
"I hadn't begun on you yet. You see, you didn't even occur." She noticed the mist, and added: "I'm sorry."
"You're not a bit," he declared. "You like to hurt me, I believe. But I'll make you remember."
She felt like laughing for the first time since the news of Darling's death was brought to her.
"Please don't," she pleaded.
"Don't make you remember?"
"Oh, you can't do that! I mean, please don't weep. You promised me once you wouldn't, you know."
He rose, frowning, the last hope dead, and she sat regarding him through drooped lashes.
"Good-by!" he muttered, and began backing toward the door.
She waited until his hand was on the knob. Then:
"Good-by, Gerald!" she said, smiling. "I'm so glad I had strength enough not to bolt with you when you asked me."
"Why?" he asked, desperately seizing an excuse to linger.
"Because you are so good-looking, and I do get so tired of looking at good-looking men."
When he got back to Dinghal's quarters young Andrews tried to cut his own throat, mainly to make Nina remember him. That he didn't succeed in the act was due primarily to a nervously irresolute hand, and secondarily to his friend Dinghal, who suspected and arrived in the nick of time.
In the excitement of the ensuing moment the young man told Dinghal every word of the conversation with Mrs. Darling; and the deputy commissioner, as he clumsily drew the edges of the shallow cut together and fastened them with court-plaster, waxed more and more indignant; for he was very fond of Gerald Andrews, and declared that if she didn't kill her husband it was not because she was not capable of it.
It seems probable that he did not confine the expression of this opinion, either, to the privacy of his own dwelling. For guests at a dinner-party which he attended that same evening quoted him to the same effect—exaggerated, possibly, in the retelling—and the report in time trickled into the hearing of Kneedrock.
Thereupon the viscount called upon the deputy commissioner, and some hot words passed between them. Dinghal, it seems, made no attempt whatever to disguise his opinion.
"I don't care a damn what you think," returned Nina Darling's cousin. "That's your own business; the inalienable right of man and beast is to think whatever they please. But when a man gossips or a dog snarls, that changes the matter. They both deserve correction."
Dinghal was not the most robust of men, but he was no coward. As has been said, he was rarely malicious. As a rule, he rehearsed his story, and left it to his hearers to draw their own conclusions.
This time, through sheer loyalty to young Andrews, he had erred, and he knew it. But he was far from admitting this to Kneedrock.
"And in the present instance the correction is to be administered—how?" he asked.
"By me—with this," was the viscount's answer, holding up his doubled right hand.
"You mean your purpose is to punch my head?"
"Precisely," returned the other.
"You must be mad, Lord Kneedrock. Remember that I am a civil officer in his majesty's service. If you feel that I have injured you or yours in any way, there is a recognized means of adjustment. There are the courts."
"The courts are too slow and indecisive."
"Nevertheless, if you dare lay a hand on me I shall test them. I give you fair warning."
Kneedrock laughed his irritating laugh.
"You are quite meeting my opinion of you," he said. "You are a cur and a poltroon."
The deputy commissioner's face flamed. "If you dare repeat that," he snapped, "I shall—"
"Go to the courts, I assume."
The viscount saw his fingers double into his palms. "You are a liar and a scandalmonger!" he flung at him. And at this Dinghal drew back his fist.
"Although you have the advantage," he flared, "no man may blackguard me and go unpunished!"
"My left hand is crippled," said Kneedrock. "I shall not use it." And as Dinghal aimed a blow at his chin, he guarded with his right.
The bout lasted something over four minutes, during which Kneedrock landed at will. There was no instant when he did not command.
Now and again, to encourage his adversary to face further punishment, he permitted him to get in a body blow, or accepted a glancing tap on neck or cheek. And by way of finale he broke Dinghal's somewhat protuberant nose.
Three days later he and Nina took ship at Bombay and sailed for England.
"I'd rather have a whole cab-driver to myself than share a peer of the realm with another woman," said Mrs. Darling.
She had been in England eighteen months, and the shadow of her tragedy, which never bore very heavily, had lifted.
She sat in a basket chair on the lawn at Puddlewood, dressed all in filmy white, and sipped tea with the Duchess of Pemberwell, her great-aunt, in the shade of one of Puddlewood's ancient oaks. In her lap lay an unopened copy of theTimes.
"Is he a cab-driver, then?" inquired the duchess, taking her literally.
"Yes," Nina laughed, "a heavenly cab-driver. He threads the milky way. Some say aviator."
"Oh, Nina!"
"He's very nice, I assure you, my dear. Not an ounce of fat on him. All bone and sinew and nerve."
"And—a Yankee," added the duchess belittlingly.
"A free-born American," corrected her great-niece, "and with the loveliest accent. You should hear him say: 'Evah at you' se'vice, Miss' Dahling.' You'd fall in love with him yourself."
"And this aviator person is yours exclusively?"
"Undividedly. Isn't it nice?"
"I think I should prefer Nibbetts myself; or Sir George Grey, or—well, scores I could name."
"I dare say. You married the duke. Your taste speaks for itself, dear aunt."
Though the duchess made no retort, she appeared annoyed. She poured herself a fresh cup of tea and sipped it in silence. Nina opened her paper.
She was still turning the pages when his grace sauntered over, halted, and gazed for a moment at the spread tea-table. He was small, bald and peaked, with tiny black eyes like shoe-buttons.
"There isn't any seed-cake," he complained. "I can't take tea without seed-cake. You know I never take tea without seed-cake, do I, Doody?" Doody was his pet name for his duchess.
"No, you don't," she said. "It's too bad. There was only a little, and Nina ate it."
Nina, who had not been listening, looked up.
"What's that I ate?" she asked.
"Doody says you ate all the seed-cake," explained the duke.
"Oh, I believe I did. It was exceptionally good, too. I wish there had been more."
"You don't wish it half as much as I," and there was a suspicion of querulousness in his grace's tone.
"He's flying at Doncaster to-day," Nina observed, devouring the aviation news, and already forgetful of the duke and the seed-cake.
"Who's flying?" he asked sharply.
"Pierson," answered Nina. "My David."
"Then I hope he jolly well breaks his neck," was the snapping rejoinder as his grace wheeled about and set off for the castle to admonish his housekeeper.
Having exhausted the aviation news, Mrs. Darling turned to the American cables. Everything American now held for her a magnified interest. Presently she slapped the page out flatter and interestedly bent her head closer.
"Fancy!" she exclaimed a moment later, sitting up straight. "He's been sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment."
"Your David?" asked the duchess indifferently.
"Certainly not. He's poor but honest. J. Sprague Ramsay, of Chicago, the multimillionaire banker, whose wife and daughter I knew in India. I don't in the least understand it—it's for lending himself money from his own banks or something. It's too bad. Poor, poor Sibylla. And Jane was just coming to a marriageable age. It will spoil all her chances."
"It should be a lesson to you, Nina. I should think you'd feel disgraced. You associated with the family of a convict. You must curb your indiscriminate freedom. You must, really."
"Pooh!" cried her great-niece. "The Ramsays were charming. It wasn't their fault that J. Sprague borrowed more than he had a right to."
Her great-aunt's disapproval of Americans in general and of the American aviator in particular, had the usual effect of disapproval when brought to bear on an independent spirit. It whetted Nina's ardor for the daring and intrepid David Pierson.
She not only attended the meetings at which he flew, but on repeated occasions she flew with him. Her infatuation was the talk of her friends and her enemies.
As a matter of fact the American was by no means a bad sort. He came of good, honest stock, was fairly well educated, and possessed a comfortable income from Kentucky tobacco plantations, which he had inherited.
With the coming of autumn, however, the inevitable happened. He proposed marriage to the young widow who had led him to believe he had only to ask to be given. And Nina refused him flatly.
David Pierson, however, was a distinctly different type from young Andrews. His eyes didn't grow misty and he didn't weep. He was, in fact, a distinctly different type from any of the men she had jilted or repulsed. He didn't storm and he didn't sulk.
On the contrary, he caught hold of her shoulders and he shook her until her teeth chattered. And then, not in the least gently, he boxed both her ears, and walked out, leaving her in a towering rage.
Out of sheer revenge, rather than for any other reason, she began almost at once to encourage the attentions of a certain cabinet minister. She let him hold her hand and send her books of amorous verses with marked stanzas.
More than that, she invited veiled paragraphs in the society journals, hinting at a pending betrothal, and mailed each issue, blue-penciled, to the aviator's home address in Louisville.
But with the cabinet minister Nina Darling went no further than she had with any of the others. She shunted him by making him madly jealous, first, and then openly casting him aside for one of the poets to whose passionate lines he had been the means of introducing her.
In the next three years she ran sort of continuously amuck against the susceptible, strewing her world with broken, bleeding hearts. And all the while the one man for whom she would gladly have given her life looked on with a sneer and a cynic smile, and said harsh, cruel things to her and of her, in season and out.
There were those who held that it was due in a large measure to Lord Kneedrock that the ugly mystery of poor Darling's horrid death was not permitted to rest in the grave with the victim.
Still there may have been injustice in this, for there were still quite as many to say that Kneedrock shot him because he coveted Nina for himself, as there were that it was Nina or that it was suicide.
Wherever two or three were gathered together in Vanity Fair, one was sure to hear the phrase: "Poor Darling!" and without waiting very long for it, either.
Someone said "Poor Darling!" at Bellingdown, one day in late March, and as usual the Umballa tragedy was threshed out all over again, though it was nearly five years gone, and to separate a fresh grain of truth from the chaff was nigh hopeless.
"Oh, Nina couldn't," Lady Bellingdown insisted. "I've seen a lot of her, and I could tell."
Lord Waltheof, who was the "tame cat" of the household, a tall, slim, dark man, reminded her that Mrs. Darling couldn't remember what happened.
"Oh, you're wrong about that, Wally," put in Charlotte Grey, the fair, thin bride of Sir George, who was up in town with Lord Bellingdown. "You're wrong about that. She didn't remember at first, but she does now. Nibbetts told me so. She remembers, but she doesn't speak of it. That is rather suspicious, you know."
"She's a widow without a sorrow," Kitty Bellingdown declared. "She never loved Darling; we all know that."
"She doesn't know what love is," asserted the bride, who was missing her husband terribly. "She has passion, but no affection."
"Has she been casting sheeps' eyes at Shucks?" It was Waltheof who asked. "Shucks" was Sir George's nursery name. It is a mark of the bluest blood to carry some such absurd nursery cognomen from the nursery to Eton, or Harrow, or Winchester, and then on to one or the other of the universities.
"She'd better not," Charlotte returned, her eyes snapping.
"I—I didn't know." And Waltheof slyly pinched Lady Bellingdown's shoulder as he stood behind her chair.
"I've always thought Nibbetts had a hand in it," Lord Waltheof ventured. "It was odd, his turning up just at that time, you must all admit that. Eight years he buried himself, God only knows where, and then all of a sudden he appears in Umballa, and the very next night poor Darling is mysteriously shot. Then back he comes to London and takes up the old life, just as if he had never been away and nothing had happened."
Lady Kitty nodded. "That's perfectly true," she said. "Does any one know where he was?"
"Yes," the tall man answered. "We all know generally. But only one man accurately. His solicitor was informed all the while. When I want a secret kept that's the man I'm going to employ."
"I'd see him right away if I were you," suggested Charlotte, and Lady Bellingdown frowned.
"I believe Nibbetts would marry Nina to-morrow if she'd say yes," Waltheof continued. "But she won't. She won't say yes to any man. Once was enough for her. That's flat."
"If he cares so much for her he has a poor way of showing it. I've never heard him give her a civil word." The bride spoke out of the richness of her experience.
"I'm certain she cares for him," averred Lady Bellingdown. "And he's a brute to her."
"It's the crime that stands between them," Waltheof said with decision. "Nibbetts is queer. And it's that that's preyed on his mind until he's not quite all there, don't you know."
"Everybody knows his father is queer," contributed their hostess.
They dropped the subject after a while without getting a step further than when they started. But they didn't drop gossip. Dinghal, with his broken nose, would have been in his element at Bellingdown. But he was still in Umballa, suffering tortures from catarrh.
"Caryll Carleigh's to be married on the twelfth." Lady Kitty flung the announcement to Lady Charlotte.
"So soon?"
"Yes. They've hurried it, because the girl's mother, who is the most restless of mortals, wants to go to China or somewhere. She's just back now from Egypt. Her daughter was with friends at Capri for the winter. That's where Caryll met her. They are Americans, you know."
"So I heard. I do hope Caryll will be happy; but it is a risk. Americans are always divorcing. They're so lacking in repose."
"He tells me she's adorable."
"Oh, of course. Still he might, don't you think, have done better at home? English girls fit in so much better."
"I dare say. But one never could advise Caryll. He's most exasperatingly headstrong." The young baronet was her nephew and she knew.
"I've met Mrs. Veynol and her filly," Waltheof put in. It was after dinner, and he had been sipping liqueurs and smoking cigarettes alone in the dining-hall. "She's exasperatingly headstrong, too. Not my choice for a mother-in-law."
Lady Bellingdown twisted her long neck to give him a smile. He was behind her chair as usual. "Caryll never met Mrs. Veynol until a week ago. It was all arranged by correspondence," she said.
"Who was Veynol?" asked Charlotte Grey. "It seems to me I've heard the name, but—"
"South African diamond man. She married him after a week's acquaintance at Cape Town, and he died in five months and left her a Mrs. Cr[oe]sus," Waltheof made clear. "The girl calls herself Veynol, too, but that isn't her name, of course."
"Americans hold their names so lightly, don't they?" observed Charlotte. "George says they change them at the drop of the hat."
"Due principally to the divorce courts and the bankruptcy laws," explained the man illuminatingly. "They're a rum lot out there."
He had never been to America; but the average Briton invariably assumes a wisdom if he has it not, especially when conversing with the dependent sex.
As events turned out, however, Rosamond Veynol didn't change her name again on the twelfth of April. For some reason which was not altogether made clear the wedding was postponed.
The published report was that Miss Veynol was ill, but Miss Veynol was not ill in the least, as a number of eye-witnesses who saw her in Paris, where she was temporarily residing, stood ready to prove.
There was no end of question, naturally, and there was no end of gossip. This condition lasted for three months. And then, to society's intense surprise, it received invitations for the nuptial ceremony at St. Margaret's, Westminster, and for the wedding breakfast at Mrs. Veynol's recently leased establishment in Park Lane.
Lady Bellingdown was up in town for the express purpose of selecting a wedding gift, in which Lord Waltheof had kindly volunteered to assist—"Donty-Down," her lord and master, being in Paris just then—when she chanced upon Nina Darling coming out of a shop in New Bond Street and looking absolutely radiant.
"The widow without a sorrow!" she exclaimed, grasping both her hands and kissing her through her veil. "I called you that the other day, and now I see how well it suits you."
"If it was the other day you were wrong," Nina returned. "But to-day you are right. I feel as free as the robins in St. James's Park. I have just sent the most importunate of Austrian archdukes about his business, and I breathe freely for the first time in six weeks."
"My dear, you are incorrigible. Aren't you ever going to make some deserving man happy?"
"There is no such animal," declared this outrageous flirt. "I am a righteously avenging Nemesis. I dispense to man his just deserts."
"You arela belle dame sans merci."
"Tell me of Nibbetts, Mrs. Darling," Waltheof cut in suggestively. "I've not seen him in months."
"Nor I," replied Nina. "He's been in Dundee. I hear he's in love with a Scotch lassie. I suspect she's a marmalade-maker."
"Really!" exclaimed the tame cat, taking her seriously. "Too devilish bad!"
"Yes. Isn't it? Fancy how tired he must get of smelling orange peel every time he kisses her hand!" She made a grimace and turned back to Kitty Bellingdown. "You didn't come up for the season? Why?"
"I've been wretched. So upset over Caryll's affair. I hadn't the heart to face any one. But now it's all quite straightened out, you know, and I'm so glad for the boy's sake."
"Do tell me what it was," Nina urged. "I heard the mother fell in love with him and was jealous of the girl."
"No, it wasn't that," was the non-committal reply.
"Odd, but I haven't seen Caryll since we were kiddies. How has he grown? Handsome?"
"Oh, very. A sweet boy. He'd make any woman happy."
"Then he's a phenomenon. I wish I might have met him."
Waltheof laughed. "He seems to have had trouble enough," he said.
But Sir Caryll Carleigh's troubles weren't over by any means. At the last minute the wedding invitations were recalled and the presents returned. A fortnight later his aunt received from him the following letter, dated from a village in Perthshire:
Dear Aunt Kitty: I'm up here spearing salmon and all that sort of thing, don't you know, and trying to forget. It was a beastly cropper—this wedding mess—and I've gone to pieces over it, for I did love Rosamond awfully. Such a ripping girl! Twenty thousand a year in her own right, too, left her by that diamond chap, just for taking his rotting name. Sounds like a disinfectant or some chemist stuff to me. Veynol. Pah!However, she decided at the last minute that she liked it better than Carleigh, and there you are. And here am I, most fearfully cut up. I'll never get over it. I jolly well know I sha'n't. It is a sickener, I can tell you, and I'm thinking strongly of going in for the church—joining some order or brotherhood or some such silly old thing.One thing I am sure of. I'll never look a woman in the face again. I hate the whole bally lot. Of course, you're not in this, you know—for you have been a good sort all through. Regular top-hole, you are. But I mean other women—girls—and all that rubbishy lot.And now, dearest and best of aunties, I've a favor to ask. This mess-up, you know, has cost me a pretty penny, and the truth is, I'm stony. Do send me a tenner by return of post. I'll pay you back when I sell the engagement ring. It's ripping. It is really.Your affectionate but heart-broken nephew,Caryll.
Dear Aunt Kitty: I'm up here spearing salmon and all that sort of thing, don't you know, and trying to forget. It was a beastly cropper—this wedding mess—and I've gone to pieces over it, for I did love Rosamond awfully. Such a ripping girl! Twenty thousand a year in her own right, too, left her by that diamond chap, just for taking his rotting name. Sounds like a disinfectant or some chemist stuff to me. Veynol. Pah!
However, she decided at the last minute that she liked it better than Carleigh, and there you are. And here am I, most fearfully cut up. I'll never get over it. I jolly well know I sha'n't. It is a sickener, I can tell you, and I'm thinking strongly of going in for the church—joining some order or brotherhood or some such silly old thing.
One thing I am sure of. I'll never look a woman in the face again. I hate the whole bally lot. Of course, you're not in this, you know—for you have been a good sort all through. Regular top-hole, you are. But I mean other women—girls—and all that rubbishy lot.
And now, dearest and best of aunties, I've a favor to ask. This mess-up, you know, has cost me a pretty penny, and the truth is, I'm stony. Do send me a tenner by return of post. I'll pay you back when I sell the engagement ring. It's ripping. It is really.
Your affectionate but heart-broken nephew,Caryll.
Your affectionate but heart-broken nephew,Caryll.